Well, everybody has to read the docs. Either for learning or for advanced usage. I’m a GMT developer and have to read the docs all the time for non trivial things. GMT is just too big for anyone to know it by hart.
People complain about the syntax but let me explore a bit just the frame="a" option above. It means draw axes with automatic labeling. Now, if we want we can control the label font, the label font size the spacing from the labeling from the axes, the tick marks length, which axes to plot, which axes to annotate and more. So, for example if one want to plot all 4 axes but annotate only the left and bottom, one would use frame="a WSen". But for plotting only the left axes (the West) it would be frame="a W". And this still by letting the automatic labeling decide what to do for us. Imagine what it would take to spell all this options. Just for the WSen one would have to do something like.
annotate_west=true, annotate_south=true, draw_only_east=true, draw_only_north=true
expand this to other options and it would take a page just to fine control a simple plot. This is the challenge of creating an upper level interface. The other challenge is on how to document it. I can’t just duplicate all the GMT documentation in GMT.jl. So far what I came out with was to put a link after each option directing to the GMT corresponding documentation, See for example the coast module. But, as mentioned in the opening post of this thread, I most than welcome suggestions on how to improve both the package and its docs.